I love sailing Royal Caribbean from Galveston. Their ships are amazing, and the on board customer service is very good. Before you board, however, their customer service is significantly more problematic. I wrote previously about problems with my online account showing the correct balance before a previous cruise, and on this cruise different agents said different things about whether my fare was refundable. Today, Royal Caribbean IT struck again. Here’s the tale.
I sail next month. This is a trip we have been looking forward to for a long time. I logged in 90 days before the cruise, checked in, and printed out the boarding pass. I didn’t print out the luggage tags, because it still seemed way too early for that.
Last week I logged in and received an odd message. It said my Set Sail (boarding) pass and luggage tags were pending. I thought that was odd as I already had a boarding pass. Logging back in today, I received the same message. I should have known it was going to be a long day when I called and the lady with whom I spoke said customer service agents could no longer access customer reservations. No kidding. She then insisted that something must be missing from one of the guests. When I pointed out that we were all checked in, she said that, “Sometimes information falls out.” Twice. Sometimes information falls out.
I shall spare the details of the rest of the call. It was unpleasant, and my goal here is to provide useful information if you have a similar problem. I had booked an additional package called The Key. One of the very good things about Royal Caribbean is that you can cancel additional packages like that until a couple of days before you board. I did, and they refunded my money. I am financially whole.
So what should I do if I can’t print boarding passes?
Unfortunately, the act of refunding my money broke Royal Caribbean IT. Their system now shows that I owe a balance. The only was to solve this was for them to send in a service ticket to the same IT department. They said to expect a 10 day delay before it was fixed. The moral of the story? If you cannot print your Set Sail pass and luggage tags and it is less that 90 days until your cruise, see if you have cancelled any additional packages. You will save significant time if you raise that question yourself. Happy sailing!
